D&D 5E Who wrote these CRs?

[lowkey13]

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[AaronOfBarbaria]

But even with this guideline, it isn't always applied to make sense.

Imagine a new DM trying to throw a monster at a party. The new DM chooses, out of a hat, the Rakshasa against a 13th level party (CR 13). Of course, the reason the Rakshasa has that CR is because it has immunity to spells below 6th level, and immunity to non-magic weapons. But if your party has magic weapons, the monster is toast. HP: 110, AC: 16, 18 damage a round. Sure, it has a few good other abilities, but if you throw him into most combats ... it won't end well for the Rakshasa. Just to use one example.

It's better to try and get a feel for the monsters and the party as you go along, and view the CRs as simply very rough guidelines as to strength between monsters, as opposed to mechanically deterministic.

Nothing you say here seems to actually contradict my statements, even though you appear to be thinking that something does.

CR suggest not using a Rakshasa against a party lower than level 13 - but CR never says "don't read the monsters, this number is all you need to pay attention to and there is no way that something about the monster is going to require you to actually think about how to use this monster specifically, rather than just as an inflated bag of stats you can run identical to how you would run, say, an ogre."

No matter how much guidance is given, the DM is still going to have to actually read the monsters and play to their particular abilities if they want to see that monster actually shine (by which I mean make for interesting gameplay while getting completely destroyed in 3-5 rounds by the party should combat occur).

 

[lowkey13]

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[AaronOfBarbaria]

That monster would likely get destroyed by a party of 7th levels in one round. Maybe two.

On that we will have to disagree, since your argument is likely true given the assumptions you approach the game with despite that it does not at all match the assumptions I approach the game with and thus would not prove true at my table, where 7th level characters would be lucky or specifically plotting to kill specifically a rakshasa, to even manage to scratch the devilish thing.

Put another way, if you're simply saying that the "guidance" is the same as the "guidance" provided by 1e (where you could look at the HD of the monster for a quick and rough estimate of the power, but then read it and see what special abilities it might have), I don't disagree.

Cool.

That said, I think that the way that CR is over-emphasized in the RAW...

I see no "over-emphasis." I see only the establishment of what CR means in 5th edition, guidance on how to set up combat encounters that aren't likely to kill your player characters, and constant reminders that the DM not only should, but often has to, tailor things to more specifically fit their group.

...does a disservice to new DMs

I find that what it is that does a disservice to new DMs is not in the book, but in unreasonable player expectations of a new DM running a game as well as an experienced DM (and I should not that when I say "player" I am including the one trying to DM too), and in the underestimation of a new DM's intelligence by established DMs along the lines of thinking that a new DM is any more or less likely than an established DM to misread, misunderstand, or apply inappropriate emphasis to any part of the game rules or DMing advice present in the books.

, because it makes it seem like it's just a mechanical application, as opposed to being a *very rough* guideline to the approximate strength of the monster. Especially once you get past, say, CR5.[/QUOTE]

 

[bganon]

Some general responses:

The spell was Feeblemind. Solar's are immune to charm, but not enchantment. I rolled poorly against the effects.

"Rolled poorly" is an understatement. The warlock used their only 8th-level slot for a spell that had a 4% chance of success (+14 Int save with Magic Resistance against DC 19), got lucky, and one-shotted the Solar. And your conclusion is that CR is the issue?

Look, I'm happy to admit that high-level CRs are screwy. But that seems completely unrelated to what happened in your game.

 

[lowkey13]

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[S'mon]

Put another way, if you're simply saying that the "guidance" is the same as the "guidance" provided by 1e (where you could look at the HD of the monster for a quick and rough estimate of the power, but then read it and see what special abilities it might have), I don't disagree. That said, I think that the way that CR is over-emphasized in the RAW actually does a disservice to new DMs, because it makes it seem like it's just a mechanical application, as opposed to being a *very rough* guideline to the approximate strength of the monster. Especially once you get past, say, CR5.

That's my feeling - the encounter building rules in the 5e DMG are actively misleading,
they give the impression they will actually function like 4e encounter building to give a tailored,
predictable, hopefully fun experience. I've seen inexperienced 5e GMs misled by this. Conversely I run
5e like it was 1e, treat CR just as a guide to what XP to award, don't try to 'build' encounters, and it works great.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Of course, given the number of threads that have appeared regarding issues involving CRs on both this site and others, perhaps the writing about CRs wasn't sufficiently clear.

I've seen very little, if any, evidence that what is written about CR in 5th edition is unclear in those threads that you speak of (of course, I haven't necessarily seen every last one of them). What I have seen are cases where the person thinking CR is "off" is clearly applying the term as used in 3.5 or Pathfinder, or assuming that it is the equivalent to monster level as used in 4th edition - a failure to read the 5th edition usage of the term, rather than a failure to understand it once read.

 

[Pssthpok]

"Rolled poorly" is an understatement. The warlock used their only 8th-level slot for a spell that had a 4% chance of success (+14 Int save with Magic Resistance against DC 19), got lucky, and one-shotted the Solar. And your conclusion is that CR is the issue?

Look, I'm happy to admit that high-level CRs are screwy. But that seems completely unrelated to what happened in your game.

This is pretty much the end of the argument, as far as I can see it. You're talking about a very low chance of this happening. The issue is not the CRs.

In fact, I'm not even sure there's a problem here. 17th-level characters are the stuff of legend, after all.

 

[redrick]

That's my feeling - the encounter building rules in the 5e DMG are actively misleading,
they give the impression they will actually function like 4e encounter building to give a tailored,
predictable, hopefully fun experience. I've seen inexperienced 5e GMs misled by this. Conversely I run
5e like it was 1e, treat CR just as a guide to what XP to award, don't try to 'build' encounters, and it works great.

Fortunately, the encounter building guidelines in the DMG are so complicated that most DM's I know give up on them very quickly. Two sets of multipliers? Not something I'm going to worry about doing by hand very often.

New DM's make all sorts of mistakes. Running a few underwhelming combats is not one that I'm going to worry about. I think the more insidious mistake that I see in 5e is trying to pump up the difficulty by increasing the difficulty of individual encounters, rather than increasing the quantity of encounters. PCs can handle almost anything you throw at them — once a day. So the harder you make those encounters, the shorter your work day becomes, and they never actually seem that nailbiting, because PCs will use up half a tank of gas on one encounter and say, "cool, not doing that again. Let's go home and long rest." I saw it in my own games, and am still trying to work at it. I think the game might feel harder with easier encounters.